When ritzy pastimes boost résumés

A high-class hobby like polo or sailing could help land you a job—if you’re a man, said Drake Baer in NYMag.com. That’s the “unsavory takeaway” from a new study from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. Researchers sent nearly identical résumés to 316 top law firms; the CVs’ only differences were in candidates’ hobbies and interests. They found that the résumés belonging to men who noted upper-crust hobbies like sailing or classical music received 13 callbacks, while the résumés belonging to women with the same interests received only three. Men with more lowbrow tastes—soccer, country tunes—got just one interview. Many hiring attorneys openly ques tioned in interviews whether female candidates with high-class hobbies “even wanted the job.” “We thought that social class background would lift all those people regardless of gender,” said study author Lauren Rivera. “That was not the case.”